Board

Officers

Anne Flaherty, PresidentFlaherty, a direct descendant of John Kehoe, has spent almost two decades researching and documenting Pennsylvania’s “Molly Maguire” conflict. Her presentations include community programs offered through the University of Massachusetts and American, Fairfield, and Pennsylvania State universities. Publication venues include the Irish Echo and the online blog From John Kehoe’s Cell.

In 2013, Flaherty formed the Kehoe Foundation to help memorialize this history. In 2017, she presented “Pennsylvania’s ‘Molly Maguires’: Fact vs. Fiction” at the American Conference for Irish Studies-Western Regional (ACIS-West) meeting in Spokane, Washington. Flaherty is currently completing the manuscript The Passion of John Kehoe and the Myth of the “Molly Maguires.”

In June 2018, at the national ACIS meeting in Cork, Ireland, Flaherty will present “Pennsylvania’s ‘Molly Maguires’: Did a Nativist Environment Hang Innocent Irishman?” In January 2018, Eric Foner reviewed these findings and characterized them as “very impressive and convincing.”

Susie Flaherty, Vice PresidentFlaherty, a direct descendant of Kehoe, serves as communications director for the Center for Celiac Research at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Flaherty is co-author with Alessio Fasano, MD, of Gluten Freedom. To the Kehoe Foundation’s efforts, she brings a BA honors degree in history from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and a longtime interest in this revisionist history.

Rosemary Gido, PhD, Treasurer, DirectorProfessor emeritus in criminology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and author of Women’s Mental Health Needs Across the Criminal Justice System, Gido currently serves as editor of The Prison Journal. Gido authored the chapter “Alexander Campbell’s Molly Maguire Trial: The Miners and the Pinkertons” for F. Bailey and S. Chermak’s Famous American Crimes and Trials.

Sarah Brozena, JD, DirectorBrozena is a lawyer who works on environmental policy issues in Washington, D.C. She is a member of both the State of Maryland and District of Columbia bars.

Lucia Dailey, Secretary, DirectorDailey, a writer and teacher, Pennsylvania Roster Artist and grantee, and recipient of the University of Scranton’s Joseph X. Brunner Prize for excellence in Foreign Languages, is a descendant of Irish coal miners. Howard Zinn described Dailey’s novel Mine Seed, a historical telling of the wage battle of Pennsylvania’s hard coal miners, as “something extraordinary in literature.” In January 2018, during Anthracite Mining Heritage Month, Dailey presented “1877, Scranton” at the University of Scranton’s discussion of four historic anthracite region labor strikes.

Board Members

Mary Grace Flaherty, PhD
Flaherty, a direct descendant of Kehoe, received a Masters in Library Science from the University of Maryland. Flaherty currently serves as assistant professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Henry Foner
A longtime labor and social activist, Foner served for more than two decades as union president for the Fur, Leather and Machine Workers Union. His passions included civil rights advocacy. A columnist for Jewish Currents, Foner was also the author of For Better or Verse.

Joseph Wayne
Joseph Wayne, a direct descendant of Kehoe, worked in 1978 with members of Pennsylvania’s Labor History Society to help secure Kehoe’s posthumous pardon. Today, Wayne continues to operate Kehoe’s Hibernian House in Girardville, Pennsylvania.